Adelaide festival 2014: Friday 7 March – as it happened

Join us for a week of coverage from sunny Adelaide, today live from the Art Gallery of South Australia. On Friday’s blog: we preview Womadelaide, talk to Morton Subotnick, review John Waters and catch up with Writers’ Week and the fringe

Join us tomorrow for more live coverage from Adelaide festival

We’ll be talking to Batsheva’s Ohad Naharin, thinking about what it’s like to front a one man show, reviewing Womadelaide, Morton Subotnick’s Unsound gig, and Wil Anderson’s new show. All that plus our first festival podcast, more video from Dark Heart, and pictures from the city at festival time. Do join us tomorrow, and in the meatime, here’s a recap of what we bought you today.

• Guardian Australia travelled to and stayed in Adelaide courtesy of the Adelaide festival. Flights from the UK were provided by Emirates.

Updated at 7.29am GMT

7.00am GMT

Fringe festival diary: March 7

Jane Howard’s going to be providing daily reports from the Fringe – although even with her fearsome work ethic, I fear we’re only going to scratch the surface. Here is her first dispatch: a tale of croquet, hula hoops, paper umbrellas – and strip-skipping. (Guardian Australia will be steering well clear of incidences of the latter.) You can read Jane’s diary in full here, or catch a snippet below.

At the Panama Club, A Simple Space has energy in spades. I first saw this production at the 2013 Fringe, when it was a half-hour performance on a weekend afternoon. The opening game of strip-skipping (speed skip until you trip, only the last one standing gets to keep their clothing) takes on quite a different slant when playing to an evening, rather than family, audience. Circus performers of course often make mistakes with their tricks – but here the fallibility of the performer is taken to extremes. Everything becomes a competition: how many standing back-tucks can you do? How good a balloon animal can you make with your hands behind your back? How long can you stay in a handstand while the audience throws plastic balls at you? No-frills acrobatic tricks make up the bulk of the performance; it’s all terrific fun.

Over the week we’ll be bringing you a series of videos about the Adelaide Biennial, in which curators and artists involved in the exhibition discuss their favourite works from it, and explain why they they find them so personally important.

Guardian Australia’s Bill Code and Alex Needham asked Lisa Slade, managing curator at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, to tell us why the Kulata Tjuta Project entry is her piece of choice at the 2014 exhibition. In a corner of the Art Gallery of South Australia, hundreds of spears hang from the ceiling, the product of a group of artists from a remote indigenous community in South Australis’s APY lands. For Slade, the piece references contemporary artwork in a brave statement on colonialism, while also reviving the traditional art of spear-making

Adelaide Fringe – Jane Howard's top 10 picks

With more than 900 shows, the Fringe programme can seem a bit daunting. Usefully, Jane Howard’s ripped through it and selected her must-see shows. You can read her top 10 in full here, for more information on each of her recommendations, or get a quick hit to copy and paste to your must-do list below.

You may have missed … Roman Tragedies, Skywhale and River of Fundament

Artist Patricia Piccinini discusses her work Skywhale. The piece was part of Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Skywhale by artist Patricia Piccinini, part of Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

We’re live from the festival all this week – but we’ve also been out enjoying some of its opening week offerings. Alica has taken these fab pictures of the Skywhale, visting as part of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian art, while you can read Alfred’s take of Roman Tragedies and River of Fundament. Snippets and links to the full reviews below

Shakespeare would have been surprised to find his Roman-themed dramas – Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra – interpreted as a trilogy. He would have been even more surprised at the notion of bolting all three together into a single, unbroken six-hour span. Yet he might conceivably have approved of the idea of inviting the audience to sit amid the action, tweet their responses @RomanTragedies and make use of the mobile charging points provided at the side of the stage.

Whether Barney’s barmy, allegorical phantasmagoria actually signifies anything, the film stands as a brilliantly rendered, giddily self-referential satire of contemporary American culture; though much the same could be said about the Lego Movie, with which River of Fundament shares more in common than it may care to admit.

The only thing you can say with any great certainty is that Barney’s magnum opus is deliberately calculated to divide opinion. It’s a significant work of art. It’s full of shit. But as Norman Mailer consistently and maddeningly proved, it’s quite possible for both of these things to be true at the same time.

Updated at 4.22am GMT

4.00am GMT

Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon: 'It blew my mind!'

Musician Morton Subotnick photographed in Adelaide. Photograph by Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Fifty years ago, Morton Subotnick inadvertently invented techno with his “electronic music box”, the Buchla synthesiser. This evening he’s going to be revisiting that experience in Adelaide, performing his record Silver Apples of the Moon – the first electronic album ever to be commissioned by a classical record label – in its entirety on a modern recreation of the synthesiser. (The original is in the Library of Congress).

We’ll be reviewing the show tonight, but first Alfred Hickling has been talking to the composer ahead of his performance. Subotnick is showing no signs of slowing down – he shows Alfred his new app that enables kids to create their own electronic compositions on an iPad – in a really charming interview. The pair discuss the record’s trippy associations (“I certainly wasn’t on drugs when I made it. I was working too hard”), playing old music on new inventions, and the origins of the albums title. It’s a fantastic piece – and you can read it in full here. But here’s a taster

Almost 50 years on, Silver Apples of the Moon still sounds arrestingly contemporary. The piece is in two parts: the first is slower, moodier and full of profound, synthetic sighs, like a robot in despair; then in the second half, something extraordinary happens – the music suddenly develops a pulse and climaxes in the frenzied hammering of proto-club rhythms.

This had simply never been heard before. Early electronic compositions were mostly about sine waves, oscillations, timbre – all devoid of rhythm, by and large. Yet, says Subotnick, his discovery of beats happened almost by accident. “In the early days, it took a long, long time – sometimes even days – to programme a sequence. Quite unintentionally, I found I had created this pulsating rhythm. I started grooving with it – and it blew my mind.”

Updated at 2.55am GMT

3.09am GMT

Snowtown Live – a review

Snowtown Live at Adelaide Town Hall. Photograph by Alicia Canter for the Guardian

That is admittedly not the most upbeat night out – and poor Alfred spent the evening before swotting up by watching the film in its entirety, which is quite a lot of time spent with a rather grim subject – but he was impressed by the results, as you can read in his four-star review of the show here. Here’s a snippet from the review:

Kurzel leads a six piece band switching between synthesiser drones, treated percussion and choppy guitar. It’s an edgy, electric sound with a heavy pulse and cumulative intensity that brings to mind the compositions of Louis Andriessen and the industrial metal in vogue at the time the murders took place. It’s heavy, hypnotic and mostly restricted to a single key, indicative of demoralised community that has sunk into the poverty trap with little chance of escape.

Marcel Weber’s accompanying montage of cancelled footage is truly disturbing. Freed from narrative responsibility, the camera dwells for rather too long on images of under-nourished children amusing themselves in joyless playgrounds or hanging listlessly around the estate. Rather creepily, the viewer becomes complicit with the voyeurs and predators the community is determined to expunge.

2.43am GMT

EastEnd Cabaret: Late-night dirty talk

Last night I headed off to explore Adelaide Fringe, which is enormous, and gorgeously other-worldly and exciting. Jane Howard is going to be reporting from fringe all this week – she’s on a strict regime of several million shows a day – but first here’s a quick review from me of EastEnd Cabaret, a late-night show definitely worth staying up for. It’s a hoot – though, as Alex found out, there is also some outrageous audience participation …

EastEnd Cabaret's Bernadette Byrne and Victor Victoria in the Garden of Unearthly Delights. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

When it comes to tricky social situations, taking your friend to a show where a performer thoroughly licks his face to a soundtrack of delighted gasps and giggles is at the more difficult end of the scale. As is pulling off a performance that leaves your victims – who have crawled down the aisle on their hands and knees, been mercilessly flirted with, and had their future sex lives discussed in great detail from the stage – almost pleased to have been singled out for humiliation.

That British duo EastEnd Cabaret make such delicate audience manipulation look effortless explains why they’re a smutty cut above (below?) their competition. In a cabaret world stuffed with sexy, vintage-inspired acts – a trend that seemingly will not stop until every performer is stuffed into a corset, eyebrow arched in faux amusement, audience cowering into their drinks – Jennifer Byrne and Victoria Falconer-Pritchard are a joyous reminder of how much fun seduction can be.

And this pair really are the mistresses of it. They’re irresistible as super-sexy chanteuse of all-purpose European origin Bernadette and her sidekick Victor/Victoria – the helpless desire of the latter for the former the essential underpinning of their relationship with the audience. It provides the tension, the punchlines, and most importantly that likeability that allows Byrne and Falconer-Pritchard to push the jokes (and the audience) a good deal further than anyone should strictly be comfortable with. It admittedly seems mean to keep dear Victy in perpetual frustration, but rarely has unrequited lust been so hilariously, furiously creative as here.

The show’s in the Garden of Unearthly Delights until 16 March – buy tickets here – and at Melbourne Comedy festival 27 March to 6 April.

Updated at 2.56am GMT

2.30am GMT

Lunchtime

If you see a woman on a laptop in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s cafe, hungrily/ slightly wildly eyeing up all the plates of delicious food whizzing around, by the way, that is me. I’d say come and say hello, but you probably don’t want to leave your plate untended in my vicinity… We’ve eaten brilliantly since arriving in Adelaide. A brilliant lunch at Peel Street, and some fantastic – and cheap – tea-smoked duck and chinese greens from a place near the market have more than offset the night I had crisps for tea because everything had shut by about 9pm.

Still to come on the liveblog this afternoon, once I’ve refuelled: Alfred reviews Snowtown Live review, Jane Howard gives us her pick of the fringe, Alex looks at the Australian Biennial Dark Heart (showing here at the gallery), and more!

2.14am GMT

In pictures: Writers' Week

Adelaide Writers’ Week drew to a close yesterday, with a final day programme that included a slightly surreal session in which Christos Tsiolkas and Jeet Thayil discussed how to capture the effects of opium and amphetamines on the page, before an outwardly genteel crowd politely sitting in a manicured garden. Who knows what Adelaide’s older, more literary residents get up to in their spare time?

It was a fascinating discussion – I love to see two authors sharing a stage to unpick themes and identify common themes that might have seemed hidden at first glance. I talked to Christos after the event for our festival podcast – you’ll be able to hear the fruits of that tomorrow – and Guardian photographer Alicia Canter caught a gorgeous portrait of the author. Alicia’s been popping into Writers’ Week for the last few days; you can see a whole gallery of her glorious pictures. Here are a few below

Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the

People browse inside the bookshop tent. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Adelaidian author Hannah Kent speaks about her book Burial Rites, which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Awards. Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

Updated at 2.57am GMT

1.30am GMT

John Waters: filthy/gorgeous

John Waters

Last night Alex Needham went to see John Walters’ talk at Elder Hall. (This was not, to be clear, the gig at which the performer licked his face – that happened later). It sounds completely uproarious and brilliant fun, as his earlier appearance at Writers Week promised: “It’s hard to be an anarchist with three homes,” he intoned, drily.

You can read Alex’s review of this fantastic raconteur in full here – Walters, considering how to be bad into his 70s, seemed to do do a fine job of being bad in his late 60s here, commanding his audience to “come fuck on his grave” once he kicks the bucket. Which will make for an interesting memorial … Here’s Alex on the performance.

Waters is still a figurehead for a particular type of misfit – angry, subversive, creative and funny – though as society rightly becomes more inclusive, the margins Waters and his crew relished living on are getting as narrow as his famous moustache. Then again, as Waters recognises, human nature will ensure that the bizarre continues to thrive, particularly among sexual subcultures. In his uproarious and loosely autobiographical talk, Waters introduces us to the concept of a blouse (a “feminine top”, and he’s not talking about an item of clothing), reacquaints us with sploshers (people who derive sexual pleasure from being covered in custard and baked beans), and talks about “blossoms”, the result of an esoteric sexual practice not really suitable for a family website.

1.03am GMT

Last night's twitter reviews

We have reviews of John Waters show and Snowtown Live on the way – and some thoughts on the social awkwardness of taking a friend to see a show where one of the performers forcibly licks their face. (Sorry about that, Alex Needham, I didn’t really intend for that to happen). But first, the view from other audience members…

Womadelaide 2014 preview: a celebration of the world’s diversity

Azadoota Photograph: Womadelaide

Alfred Hickling is going to be hanging out at Womadelaide over the long weekend – lucky man! – and has been casting his eye over the line-up in advance. Along with Arrested Development and Femi Kuti, he’s looking forward to Beijing-based Hanggai (who have “a punk attitude reminiscent of a Mongolian Pogues”) and Australian-Iraqi party band Azadoota.

The band’s irrepressible leader, Robin Zirwanda, plays an ear-popping array of percussion while singing in ancient Assyrian. “Today the classical Arabic language is dying out,” Zirwanda says, “but it used to be the lingua franca of the civilised world. If this were 7,000 years ago, you and I would be speaking in Assyrian right now.”

Zirwanda, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday, left Baghdad for Sydney in 1971 – initially as a professional footballer – before being hired as a percussionist by Don McLean. Since Azadoota formed in 1971, the lineup has been in a continual state of flux, though Zirwanda’s greatest discovery is probably the sensational oud player, Ahmed Al Karawi . “I found him playing to an empty restaurant in Sydney, and now he’s recognised as one of the finest oud players in the world. Unfortunately, he’s so busy, I can’t always book him myself, ha ha. But for the festival we’ve got a nine-piece lineup representing five continents and spanning five decades in age. We’re the Womad festival in a single band.”

Welcome to our live coverage of Adelaide festival

Good morning! Greetings from the Art Gallery of South Australia which will be our base for this first day of live coverage from Adelaide festival. I’m Vicky Frost and your host for today’s liveblog. For the next six days we’ll be bringing you interviews, features, reviews, podcasts, pictures and videos from the festival – covering performance, music, visual art, literature and of course fringe.

Well, that’s the idea in any case. It’s so ridiculously glorious here on the gallery terrace that it’s quite tempting to stretch out and bask in the sunshine, but first we should update you about festival events we’ve been enjoying so far – and those that we’re looking forward to in the next week. Do leave your take on that in the comments below.

Another glorious day in Adelaide, and Guardian Australia’s culture team are spending their time in dark, indoor spaces. Today on the liveblog: Windmill Theatre’s Girl Asleep, an interview with Tectonics’ Ilan Volkov, all the best of Womadelaide and the Fringe, plus reviews of Sadeh21, The Seagull and Unsound

Join Guardian Australia's culture team for dancing lessons with Afrobeat's Femi Kuti and Positive Force, and an inspiring chat with the woman who wrote the soundtrack to the Tunisian uprising, Emel Mathlouthi. Plus: the Adelaide fringe runs away to join the circus

Join Alfred Hickling and Bill Code as they make their way through the trees of the Womadelaide festival site in South Australia, crossing paths with English folk star Sam Lee and Japanese funk machines Osaka Monaurail. Plus, hear music from Aussie-Papuan Melanesian beats outfit Airleke, and catch Arrested Development getting their raps on in the festival's Taste the World kitchen